Does anyone know the origin of this old saying, please?
N
used when someone was describing how stuck in a single way of trying
to accomplish any task, but has it anything to do with cats?
Patrick Karl
I am not sure if it's germane, but when I was a kid we called a certain
maneuver on a waist high horizontal pipe "skinning the cat". It
involved grabbing the pipe with both hands and lunging into a roll
around the pipe. There was probably more than one way to do that.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
OED defines "skin the cat" as "to pull one's body over a bar by
hanging from it by the hands and passing the feet and legs between the
arms". Interestingly it first appears about the same time (1840s) as
the "more than one way" saying, both being Americanisms. Still the
connection is not that obvious to me.
Ross Clark
Dušan Vukotić
I found this on Answer.com:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-mor1.htm
There are several versions of this saying, which suggests that there
are always several ways to do something. Charles Kingsley used one old
British form in Westward Ho! in 1855: “there are more ways of killing
a cat than choking it with cream”. Other versions include “there are
more ways of killing a dog than hanging him”, “there are more ways of
killing a cat than by choking it with butter”, and “there are more
ways of killing a dog than choking him with pudding”.
Mark Twain used your version in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court in 1889: “she was wise, subtle, and knew more than one way to
skin a cat”, that is, more than one way to get what she wanted. An
earlier appearance is in ’Way down East; or, Portraitures of Yankee
Life by Seba Smith of about 1854: “This is a money digging world of
ours; and, as it is said, ‘there are more ways than one to skin a
cat,’ so are there more ways than one of digging for money”. From the
way he writes, the author clearly knew this to be a well-known
existing proverbial saying. In fact, it is first recorded in John
Ray’s collection of English proverbs as far back as 1678.
Some writers have pointed to its use in the southern states of the US
in reference to catfish, often abbreviated to cat, a fish that is
indeed usually skinned in preparing it for eating. However, it looks
very much from the multiple versions of the saying, their wide
distribution and their age, that this is just a local application of
the proverb.
The version more than one way to skin a cat seems to have nothing
directly to do with the American English term to skin a cat, which is
to perform a type of gymnastic exercise, involving passing the feet
and legs between the arms while hanging by the hands from a horizontal
bar. However, its name may have been suggested by the action of
turning an animal’s skin inside out as part of the process of removing
it from the body.
António Marques
N
thats very very interesting thank-you :) I'd thought that it could
have had something to do with 'cat of nine-tails' and flogging from
seafaring, and it was in reverse, and wasnt sure how old it was, I
thought very old saying. So it is 'politically correct' to say that
and send a card from the animal welfare charity with 'a dog is for
life not just for Christmas'? printed on it somewhere
Yusuf B Gursey
BTW in english, I know of only the US, there seems to be an
infortunate number of jokes (i don't find them funny) and sayings
depicting cruelty to cats. as having a feline animal companion, I
protest.
Prai Jei
space-time continuum:
>> I am not sure if it's germane, but when I was a kid we called a certain
>> maneuver on a waist high horizontal pipe "skinning the cat". It
>> involved grabbing the pipe with both hands and lunging into a roll
>> around the pipe. There was probably more than one way to do that.
>
> OED defines "skin the cat" as "to pull one's body over a bar by
> hanging from it by the hands and passing the feet and legs between the
> arms". Interestingly it first appears about the same time (1840s) as
> the "more than one way" saying, both being Americanisms. Still the
> connection is not that obvious to me.
>
> Ross Clark
Could be the other way round - the name "skin the cat" got applied to the
gymnastic manoeuvre described, precisely because there was more than one
way to do it.
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Peter T. Daniels
> benli...@ihug.co.nz set the following eddies spiralling through the
If there's more than one way to do a gymnastic maneuver, then they're
not the same maneuver and they don't have the same name!
Brian M. Scott
<pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> wrote in
<news:hgl4q4$4a7$3...@news.eternal-september.org> in sci.lang:
> benl...@ihug.co.nz set the following eddies spiralling through the
> space-time continuum:
>>> I am not sure if it's germane, but when I was a kid we
>>> called a certain maneuver on a waist high horizontal
>>> pipe "skinning the cat". �It involved grabbing the pipe
>>> with both hands and lunging into a roll around the
>>> pipe. �There was probably more than one way to do that.
That's not skinning the cat. If you were going forward over
the bar, I've no name for it at all; if you were lunging
under it, bringing your feet up on the far side and over the
pipe, it was a belly-grind.
>> OED defines "skin the cat" as "to pull one's body over a
>> bar by hanging from it by the hands and passing the feet
>> and legs between the arms".
The first part has nothing to do with the meaning that I
know, but the second half is right. One doesn't go over the
bar at all. One goes under it. The full manoeuvre starts
from a hang. One draws one's feet up so that they pass
under the bar between one's arms; at this point one's head
and torso are upside-down. One keeps going, dropping one's
feet towards the floor, until one's body is once again more
or less upright (and one's shoulders are under considerable
strain), and concludes by reversing the whole procedure to
return to the starting position.
>> Interestingly it first appears about the same time
>> (1840s) as the "more than one way" saying, both being
>> Americanisms. Still the connection is not that obvious
>> to me.
I'm a bit doubtful that there is one. By the way,
<http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-mor1.htm> says that the
proverb appears in John Ray's 1678 collection of English
proverbs, and I found a claim that his version reads
'There's more than one way to skin a cat without tearing the
hide'.
> Could be the other way round - the name "skin the cat" got
> applied to the gymnastic manoeuvre described, precisely
> because there was more than one way to do it.
But there isn't.
Brian